Mark Dixon's quest to explore the world of Identity Management

Trufina: Tackling the Tough Issue of Identity Assurance

Last week I had a stimulating conversation with Jim Kinchley and Chris Madsen, executives of Trufina, a “provider of online identity verification and identity management services, enabling individuals to verify their identity attributes online, and providing the identity management tools for sharing that verified identity information with individuals and websites across the Internet.”

In October, I posted an article entitled Identity Trend 4: Identity Assurance, one of a series of posts about important trends in the Identity Management industry. In that post I proposed, “With the continual expansion of online fraud and other threats to online security and privacy, the need for Identity Assurance methods are rising. Being able to certify the that the correct Identity credentials are issue to the correct user before access is attempted is an increasingly critical issue.”

A few days after I authored that post, I became aware of Trufina, signed up for an account, paid a small fee, and had my Identity verified through a series of online questions drawn from publicly available information about me that presumably only I would know. As evidence of that successful vetting process, I posted a Trufina badge on this blog (see right column). This badge visually represents that my identity had been verified by Trufina, and provides a way that blog visitors could request a Trufina ID Card with details I elect to share. Do you want to see how it works? Please click on the Trufina badge or click here, enter your email address, and I’ll send you a link to see my Trufina-verified Identity Card.

Trufina provides a public API to allow websites to take advantage of Trufina identity validation services. For example, the Naymz online Professional Reputation Network allows members to link their Trufina Verified ID to the Naymz profile. In such a case, the Trufina Verified ID badge is shown on the Naymz member profile. I don’t use the Naymz network as extensively as LinkedIn or Facebook, but neither of those more popular social networks have validated my Identity as well as Naymz has done, thanks to the Trufina process.

I look forward to seeing how Trufina progresses in the marketplace. We really need a critical mass of easily accessible, yet secure, Identity validation services to increase the level of trust and confidence in online relationships.

About

Discovering Identity was founded on blogs.sun.com in May 2005 as a means of documenting my exploration of the field of Identity and Access Management. In February, 2010, I switched to hosting the blog at DiscoveringIdentity.com. In March 2012, I began posting Oracle-related information in both places.